This is part 2 of a series you may want to read part 1 first. In the previous post in this series we created a trivial adorner and placed it over a button – in this post we will look at placing something more complex inside an adorner. We’ve already seen Adroner is a FrameworkElement and we know FrameworkElement can contain other visuals inside it – so let’s just write an adorner that contains a control: using System; using System.Windows.Documents; using System.Windows.Controls; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Media; namespace AdornerDemo { class ControlAdorner : Adorner { private Control...

WPF adorners are visuals that live in their own layer above the normal controls, they were originally designed to support adding notes inside the document viewer (that is why they’re in the System.Windows.Documents namespace) but they can be useful in many other situations. In this series we will look at some ways to use adorners in an application and I will introduce a simple system to simplify the use of adorners. Before we begin let’s look at a simple example: We will create an adorner that draws four red boxes at it’s four corners: using System; using System.Windows.Documents; using System.Windows.Media; using System.Windows; namespace AdornerDemo { class...

Yesterday I announced the soon to be released yaTimer Central and I urged you to register to get an e-mail the moment the service is available – but I forgot the upload the registration form (yes, I’m embarrassed). So, Visit the yaTimer Central page now to register, if a lot of people register I’ll open the service in several small “waves” so the sooner you register the sooner you can synchronize yaTimer on all your computers.

I believe that the fact that yaTimer is a standalone desktop product is one of the main reasons it’s so good – this is not because of technical reasons but simply because yaTimer is designed to be used by YOU, to track YOUR time in the way that is most convenient for YOU. By not having any features that are used by your co-workers, associates, boss or customers yaTimer can be focused on YOUR needs. On the other side this lack of collaboration is also a big disadvantage – it’s harder for the manager to do his or...

The productivity tips series on this blog has been inactive for a while – and I have written before that I’m working on a whole new productivity tips section of the site that will replace it. So now, finally, the new productivity tips section is working and ready for visitors. The web site layout has changed a bit to make room for the new link on the header, if the site doesn’t look right just refresh your browser.

You probably have a story about a specific product or methodology you tried and how it succeeded or failed for you – or about a friend that is absolutely genius managing his or her time (or a complete failure at time management). Or a story about how a some time management related product saved the day or caused a complete catastrophe. I’m looking for stories about time management, time tracking or anything related to time management. If you have such a story please do send it to me, you can post it in a comment on this...

Just listened to Startup for the rest of us episode 2 - stupid reasons to start a software company, a quote from the podcast “they don’t tell you about the stacks and mountains of paperwork that you need to deal with at the end of the year with the IRS” – so true.

I’ve decided to change yaTimer’s development plan, most of the new features planned for version 2.6 will be delayed for version 2.7 (and some will probably only appear in 2.8 or even 2.9) – this will let me get the new features out faster. yaTimer 2.6 will have one major new feature – the ability to connect to an on-line service that will let you backup your yaTimer data and to synchronize it between your copies of yaTimer (for each license you buy you can install yaTimer on up to 3 computers and one portable device such as a...